E-text prepared by Al Haines
by
Author of
"The Heart of the Desert," "Still Jim," etc.
With Frontispiece in Colors by Eric Papse
[Transcriber's note: frontispiece missing from book.]
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers———New York
Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company
1917
"I am the last of my kind. This is the very peak of loneliness."—The
Murmuring Pine.
There is a State in the North Mississippi Valley unexcelled for itsquiet beauty. To the casual traveler there may be a certain monotonyin the unending miles of rolling green hills, stretching on and on intodistant, pale skies. But the native of the State knows that themonotony is only seeming.
He knows that the green hills shelter in their gentle valleys manyplacid lakes. Some of them are shallow and bordered with wild rice.Some are couched deep in the hollow of curving bluffs. Some arecarefully secreted in virgin pine woods. From the train these pinesare little suspected. Fire and the ax have long since destroyed anytrace of their growth along the railway.
Yet if the traveler but knew, those distant purple shadows against thesky-line are primeval pine woods, strange to find in a State so highlycultivated, so dotted with thriving towns.
In summer the whole great State is a wonderland of color. Wide wheatlands of a delicate yellowish green sweep mile on mile till brought topause by the black green of the woods. Mighty acres of corn land,blue-green, march on the heels of the wheat. Great pastures riotouswith early goldenrod are thick dotted with milk herds. Whitefarmhouses with red barns and little towns with gray roofs and greenshaded streets dot the State like flower beds.
An old State, as we measure things out of New England, settled by NewEnglanders during the first great emigration after the War of 1812.Its capital, Lake City, lays claim to almost a century of existence.Lying among the hills in the northern part of the State, it containsboth the state capitol and the state university. Of its thirtythousand inhabitants, five thousand are students and another fivethousand are state legislators and state employees.
The town is one of quiet loveliness. It lies in the curving shore ofone of the most beautiful of the little inland lakes. The universitycampus lies at the northern end of the curve. The dome of the capitolrises from the trees at the southern end. Between, deep lawns stretchto the water's edge with fine old houses capping the gentle slope ofthe shore. Inland lies the business section of the town, with the lesspretentious of the dwellings